Posts made in June, 2010

TweetI’ve been pondering the Internet of Things for a while, specifically the application of wireless sensor networks. I’ve designed and built more remote and mobile data capture tools and applications than I could easily remember. The common characteristic with almost all of them however, is that a human is needed to gather the data. The application of the technology is limited to the recording, management and reporting of the data. The actual observations and monitoring is still done by human senses, mostly sight, sound, touch. This strikes me as a...

TweetHow many times have you heard someone say they buy German/Aussie/British (not cars)/USA made goods, because it’s better quality then Chinese/Korean made goods? People used to say the same with Japanese, yet now when we see a “Made in Japan” stamp, it denotes quality too. What some people fail to grasp, is that a Chinese/Korean can solder/connect/plug/weld just as well as an American, Aussie or German. The difference in quality is attributed to design, process and quality control. These can be bad or good, regardless of location or labor.
Now the...

TweetI am a Spatial Software Architect (amongst other things). The problem though is that unless you’re also a software architect, you probably don’t understand what it means. Worse though, are those who scoff at the very idea that there’s such a thing, and assume we just come up with these titles to make ourselves feel important. Much like the mechanical engineer I used to commute with, who worked for one of the premier F1 racing teams. He thought the idea of giving a title of Engineer to someone designing software a joke.
Then today I saw the video...

TweetImagine if you wanted to capture a simple list of data. Chances are you’d whip out excel, type in some column headings, and go out collecting your data. Everyone can do that, it’s easy to amend on the fly, and it’s fast. Why is it then, that by simply adding a spatial reference to the mix, we need to involve the IT/GIS department to build an application? But oh no, you don’t have the correct level of server license, can you please write a business case to purchase a $60k license so you can collect data in the field. Then we need to learn how to use it. Now finally we can...